TRANSITIONING FROM FIT TO HIGH PERFORMANCE FUNCTION

That footwear can negatively impact the physiologic function of the user has been known for many decades. But the issue of the effect of footwear on athletic performance came into sharp focus in 1987 with the publication of the medical textbook, The Shoe in Sport (published German in 1987 as Der Schu im Sport). The Shoe in Sport brought together the collective expertise of 44 international authorities on orthopedics and biomechanics to focus their attention on the SHOE PROBLEM in the context of problems shoes can cause for athletes in terms of compromising performance and contributing to injury. The Shoe in Sport focusses on the medical orthopedic criteria in offering guidelines for the design of shoes for specific athletic activities including skiing and ice skating.

In the Introduction to the Shoe in Sport, Dr. med. B. Segesser and Prof. Dr. med. W, Pforringer state that the findings in the textbook should enable the interested reader to distinguish between hucksterism and humbug on the one side and the scientifically sound improvements in the athletic shoe on the other. The Shoe in Sport made it abundantly clear that it is not a question of if structures of footwear will affect the physiologic function of the user, it is a question of how structures of footwear will affect the physiologic function of the user and especially whether they will compromise athletic performance and/or contribute to injury.

With regard to guidelines for ski boots, the international authorities on orthopedics and biomechanics who contributed their expertise and knowledge to Part IV The Ski Boot took the position that, among a number of other things:

………. the total immobilization by foam injection or compression by tight buckles are unphysiologic.

The ski boot and it’s shaft must be adapted to the technical skill of the skier, and the technical skills of the skier must be adapted to the preexisting biomechanical functions of the leg and the foot.

It (the design) should not make compromises at the expense of other joints ………

It (the ski boot) must represent the ideal connecting link between man and ski (steering and feedback).

The position of international authorities on orthopedics and biomechanics on the medical and biomechanical criteria for ski boots was succinct, concise and unequivocal:

…….total immobilization by foam injection (implying by any means) or compression (of the foot) by tight buckles are (both) unphysiologic.

Dr. E. Stussi,Member of GOTS and Chief of the Biomechanical Laboratory ETH, Zurich, Switzerland made a prescient statement with implications for the future of knee injuries in skiing:

Improvements in the load acting on the ankle (implying load from improved fit) make it biomechanically very likely that the problems arising in the rather delicate knee joint will increase.

While the international authorities on orthopedics and biomechanics who contributed to The Shoe in Sport provided valuable guidelines for the design of the ski boot they did not offer a specification that would assist designers and those who work with ski boots in meeting the medical and biomechanical criteria in the guidelines. My hope and intent was that the Birdcage studies and the content of my US Patent 5,365,350 (issued on 11-30-1993, expired on 12-28-2005) would serve as a foundation on which to build a specification that would enable the structures of ski boots to be adjusted to accommodate the personal functional requirements of the skier.

The steps in my transition from Fit to High Performance Function

After the unprecedented success of my dorsal loading invention with Crazy Canuck, Steve Podborski, I used the same system with similar success in the boots of a small number of other racers. I also incorporated this system into my own and my spouses’ ski boots in conjunction with suitable liner modifications and a reduction of the ramp angle of the boot boards to just under 3 degrees which I had identified in about 1978 as the maximum angle for skier performance.

I can’t recall exactly when, but about 20 years ago I decided to move away from Lange ski boots. I purchased a pair Head World Cup 335 mm ski boots for myself and a pair of Head X-80 295 mm ski boots for my spouse. I say built because to me ski boots are raw material.

I had to completely disassemble the Head X-80s and drastically modify and reconfigure the components to adapt them to the morphology of my spouses’ feet and legs. The process took me about 35 hours. I was able to modify my Head World Cup liners to make them work without the same degree of modification. I made a dorsal loading system for my spouse similar to the one I made for Steve Podborski’s Lange ski boots. But I was able to modify the existing Head tongue so it would adequately load the dorsum of my foot. The reason I went this route is that the shell of my Head World Cup boot is very stiff. This makes inserting my size 12 US men’s foot and a dorsal system, like I fabricated for my spouse, challenging. In the order of things the dorsal system is inserted after inserting the foot in the shell.

The photo below shows my Head liner after initial modifications.

The photo below shows the Lange tricot liner I used in my spouses’ Head boots on the left with no modification other than removing the Lange flow fit pads in the side pockets. I was unable sufficiently modify the liner that came with her Head X-80 boot. The version on the right in the photo below is the same liner after modifications i made for it work with the dorsal system shown in the photo underneath. The dorsal system in itself took many hours of painstaking effort to fabricate and fine tune.

With our modified Head boots fit with my dorsal loading technology my spouse and I would easily be classified as expert skiers. As recreational skiers with skiing limited to 10-15 days a season, most skiers would have no incentive to question the adequacy of their boots or especially devote time and effort towards finding ways to reach a higher level of performance. To the contrary, I found it disturbing that the ability to ski better than the majority of skiers fostered an intoxicating sense of superiority. But I knew what I didn’t know and I knew that I still had a lot to learn. In my mind, the transition required to realise our full performance potential was not yet complete. I knew that the potential for improvement has no boundaries.

The transition to High Performance Function continues In my next post……….

Post navigation

2 comments

This information is enormously helpful in assessing what I might need to do to make my boots more functional. Had no idea that dorsal ‘fins’ would help locate the tongue and have always wondered how it could move without becoming displaced: this makes a lot of sense! Am interested to see how tongues without dorsal fins stay in place? Assume you recommend that all tongues are detached from the liner order to give better movement of the parts of the foot that need to move?

I discuss the dorsal device in great detail in my US patent 5,265,350. But any interest to date has been either close to zero or the odd collective yawn as in “nothing to see here”. The tongue and other issues that impede ankle flexion were discussed by Dr. Martin Pfeiffer when he was head of sports science at the Unversity of Salzburg in Austria. Even though Dr. Pfieffer and the two doctors who offered their assistance to me showed how ski boots can seriously impede ankle flexion mechanics in a way that compromises lower limb and function and affects the function of the whole body irrefutable evidence in the form of kinetic x-rays was ignored. I did not not ignore it.